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Can anybody please help me to identify a suitable replacement, I really am not sure where to start.

Thanks in advance...!!!

Will.

OK a few questions.1. How do you know it is your graphics card? The symptoms you describe could be just as indicative of an overheating processor or bad ram as a bad graphics gard.2. If you are going to replace it, WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO ON IT. Depending on this, we can give you the best advice based on what you want to do. (i.e. no need getting the biggest and baddest if you aren't going to play high end games).3. THis isn't really a quesiton, but a statement for future note, you need an AGP graphics card.

treen2005

Posted 04 December 2008 - 01:19 PM

#1- I don't know for sure that its my graphics card at fault, its just what I've deduced over a period of time, through error reports and searches on the net (I'm no expert by the way).

The system crashes all the time, IE and Firefox crash constantly due to Adobe Shockwave and Direct X (are they the same thing?). Sometimes an error report says its because a device or driver is failing.

#2- I'm not really into gaming, could be if I had the time, but I'm not too bothered. I mainly use my pc for internet, listening to music, photo's etc.

PedroDaGR8

Posted 04 December 2008 - 01:33 PM

#1- I don't know for sure that its my graphics card at fault, its just what I've deduced over a period of time, through error reports and searches on the net (I'm no expert by the way).

The system crashes all the time, IE and Firefox crash constantly due to Adobe Shockwave and Direct X (are they the same thing?). Sometimes an error report says its because a device or driver is failing.

#2- I'm not really into gaming, could be if I had the time, but I'm not too bothered. I mainly use my pc for internet, listening to music, photo's etc.

Cheers.

DirectX is a method of communicating 3D information with the graphics card. Shockwave is a method of providing rich content (such as 3D graphics, sound, video, 2D graphics etc.) over your browser.

Do your driver crashes usually say somethign about the video card or a driver that corresponds to the video card? THe good news is that if you aren't too bothered with gaming, you can find a lot of inexpensive AGP cards. You just need to make sure you have the output format you need (VGA (aka DSUB15), DVI, and/or HDMI). You can find the cards as cheap as 30-40 bucks shipped. That beign said, you can find better cards in the 70-100 range, that will allow you to play some games and honestly are easily double the processing power of the cheaper cards.

Maybe a video card expert (I am good but no expert when it comes to video cards) could step in and help you make sure the diagnosis is the video card. If you would like to rule out somethings. You can rule out the ram with a program called Memtest86+ (I really need to make this one of my canned speeches because this is the 5th time I have mentioned this in 3 days). This program is burned to a CD/floppy/USB drive. It will come as an iso file, which you can use free programs like ImgBurn to burn it to a CD. You then boot the computer using this media (may need to change boot order in the bios to look for CD or what not first before the HD). The program needs no operating system to run. Let it run and check your ram, I usually let it run for 12-24 hrs straight. If ANY errors show up then there is somethign suspicious in the ram subsystem. If it is clear after 24hrs. You know your ram subsystem is behaving just fine. As for testing the CPU there are a wide range of BurnIn programs such as Prime95 etc. that will test your RAM, let it run for 4-12 hrs (keeping an eye on it every now and then) and if the system doesn't crash. Your CPU is much less likely.

treen2005

Posted 04 December 2008 - 01:59 PM

treen2005

Member

Topic Starter

Member

23 posts

Only once has a error report actually referred specifically to the card. Most of the time it says "your system crashed because of a device or driver". Other issues just seem to point towards directly the graphics card.

Thanks for the other diagnostic advice, I'll look into that.

So, basically I can run any card as long as it an AGP graphics card. The more memory the card has, the better it is (in terms of graphics capabilities).

PedroDaGR8

Posted 04 December 2008 - 02:12 PM

PedroDaGR8

Member

Member

786 posts

Only once has a error report actually referred specifically to the card. Most of the time it says "your system crashed because of a device or driver". Other issues just seem to point towards directly the graphics card.

Thanks for the other diagnostic advice, I'll look into that.

So, basically I can run any card as long as it an AGP graphics card. The more memory the card has, the better it is (in terms of graphics capabilities).

Does that sound correct?

Will.

Sort of (don't you hate that answer ). The more memory helps a lot in video decoding (a little but not a huge amount) and in games that have HUGE amounts of textures to render them in 3-D (helps IMMENSLY). Otherwise the faster chips in a model are better. Since you don't game a lot, then go with the faster chip (can also be listed as more PixelShaders or StreamProcessors, think of these as cores), if the choice is between a slower chip and more ram or a faster chip with less ram.